Is there anything you had to learn the hard way when it came to girls, dating, and relationships?

I'll start. I was pretty naive to all of this stuff originally. I hadn't pulled much growing up but did some self improvement and got better looking. I was in college and me and this one girl from the apps hit it off, one of the first girls I ever had any kind of consistent "thing" with

I started going over to her house after a few dates. I remember she had some film photos on her bedroom walls of her memories, like with her friends and stuff. I noticed there were a few with this one guy but I didn't really think about it at first.

After a few weeks, I learned that it was her ex boyfriend when I was going through her instagram. She still had these comments up from a couple years before where she was saying "I love you" with a bunch of emojis and stuff. I thought that was weird but was like "hey it was a few years ago, maybe she doesn't know it's still up".

I also started to notice that she would bring him up fairly regularly. Like asking me "where's the craziest place you had sex" and then talking about having sex with him in a weird place. Or that she can do long distance because when they were long distance, they used to do phone sex and have videos and stuff.

Finally, we became exclusive. On that first week of us being exclusive, she told me she was still friends with him and that they hang out when she's back in town. At that point I was kind of like "that's weird" but she brushed it off and laughed and assured me they were ONLY friends.

I remember summer break came a month after we became exclusive and she went back home where he was. Sure enough, she started getting slower and slower to respond, I would end up barely even talking to her. On the 4th of July she literally posted a selfie on her snapchat story with him, smiling and stuff at this party.

I obviously knew there was something fucked up about that, but I was still super naive and liked her a lot since she was my first girl. I posted in /dating_advice that story basically, and of course all the dorks on there assured me she was doing nothing wrong. "She told you she still sees him!" "You're being insecure, they're just friends at a party" all that type of shit. I basically got gaslighted into believing I was crazy

Yea, sure enough she cheated on me. Lmao

Long story short I will never take anyone serious who still has their ex in their life at all. That should have been obvious but I learned that the hard way